The Vanishing of Veronica Vale

ous eyes. The beam from the lighthouse cut through the fog at regular intervals - a steady pulse, like the town's ancient heartbeat. "Why are we going to the lighthouse a

* it was just in my head." The mirror flashed. Then the room was plunged into darkness. --- Felix didn't remember falling. He only remembered landing. Not on stone - but on grass. Cold, soft grass. He opened his eyes. He was in Duskhaven - or something *like* it. Everything was off. The sky was dark red. The buildings leaned at odd angles. The trees didn't move with the wind - they breathed. "Felix?" Gus's voice was nearby. He turned. Gus was beside him, pale, wide-eyed. Still holding a flashlight, though it barely pierced the gloom here. "Where *are* we?" Felix whispered. Gus looked around. "I think we're inside the mirror." Felix frowned. "That's not a thing." "Well, we are *definitely* somewhere that breaks physics and possibly a few fashion laws. Look at that guy." They turned to see a man in the distance - dressed in a tuxedo jacket and swimming trunks, walking backward into a tree. The tree *swallowed* him. Felix exhaled. "Okay. Mirror world." They started walking, sticking close together. As they moved through the warped reflection of Duskhaven, they saw fragments - people they recognized, twisted. A child skipping rope with shadows. An old woman peeling pages off books to feed a bird made of teeth. And always, somewhere just at the edge of vision - *Veronica.* Not quite real. Not quite gone. Felix reached out toward her image again and again, but she dissolved like smoke. Then they found the theater. Or what used to be the theater. Here, it was a cathedral of mirrors. Dozens of them, stacked and spiraled like thorns around a central stage. Felix stepped forward. The mirrors reflected scenes from his life: him and Veronica at seventeen, dancing under a bridge; the day he left town without saying goodbye; a flash of her crying - or maybe laughing - on a pier he didn't recognize. One mirror cracked as he passed. Another s